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Barbara Ehrenreich Author, most recently, of Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy and of the bestselling Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Ehrenreich, less famously, holds a PhD in biology. She’s honorary co-chair of Democratic Socialists of America and founder of United Professionals, an organization of white-collar workers.

Pedro Antonio Noguera A professor at the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, Noguera has also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the University of California, Berkeley. An urban sociologist with a special interest in how big-city schools are influenced by social and economic conditions, he directs NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Urban Education.

Andrea Batista Schlesinger As executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a progressive New York think tank, Schlesinger has made herself a force for injecting the voices of young people into the democratic conversation. Among the policy studies DMI has released is one on the effects of Congressional votes and immigration policies on the middle class.

We also welcome a new contributing editor:

Gary Younge Our “Beneath the Radar” columnist and a frequent contributor, Gary is a US correspondent of the Guardian, in London. He is the author of Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the American South.

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We note with sadness the deaths of two longtime Nation friends.

The Rev. Robert Drinan

was a legal scholar, defender of human rights and, for ten years, a Democratic member of Congress from Massachusetts–a position he gave up after a Vatican ruling forbidding priests to hold legislative office. Father Drinan’s outspoken views were reflected in his support of the impeachment of Richard Nixon and in articles he wrote for The Nation defending freedom of the press and castigating House Democratic caucus leaders for blocking reforms. Nor was The Nation immune. In a 1981 letter he called it “off base” for claiming that the Democratic Study Group had turned from its liberal roots. But if conservatives, too, used its research, he wrote, that was all to the good. And, he ended the letter, “Would that more conservatives read The Nation.”

Robert Boehm

was a prominent supporter of left/liberal causes, including this magazine. As chair of the Center for Constitutional Rights, he was instrumental in putting the organization on a sound financial basis after its founding in 1966 by four radical lawyers. The Center has taken on many important fights on behalf of the scorned and voiceless and challenged constitutionally dubious policies. As Peter Weiss, a friend and co-activist, recalled, “Bob Boehm was the ideal progressive donor, combining money with ideas. Sometimes his gifts laid foundations for new and necessary work, sometimes they kept important structures from buckling, often they just provided reliable and continuing sustenance. And always he was there in person, at board meetings or on the phone, never to dictate but to ask questions and offer suggestions.”